US Congress has finally passed what have been described as “the strongest federal whistleblower protections in history”, according to the Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign (FIC).

The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act was finally passed in the Senate on November 13 and is being sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Earlier proposals were criticised for inadequate coverage of federal employees. However, under the new legislation, a federal employee is now protected even when he or she:

Is not the first person who discloses misconduct

Blows the whistle while carrying out job duties

Makes a disclosure to a supervisor

Discloses the consequences of a policy decision

Does not have incontrovertible proof of government misconduct

Examples

The FIC provided examples where the new law would protect individuals who were previously vulnerable.

These would include a Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) district office manager reporting complaints by FSIS poultry inspectors that increased line speeds had made it impossible for workers to pull all potentially contaminated birds off a line.

Other instances are a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) inspector exposing falsification of salmonella records at a cantaloupe farm and an FDA researcher being stifled by senior management from publishing findings on a controversial food ingredient.

Previous whistleblowers

FIC said the new rules would have safeguarded previous whistleblowers from mistreatment. These included Dr Dean Wyatt, a USDA public health vet who continually tried to blow the whistle on slaughterhouse animal abuse.

USDA transferred Wyatt to another slaughterhouse and imposed other forms of retaliation as attempts to silence his concerns. He was only vindicated when an outside group took undercover video of the wrongdoing that he alleged was taking place.

In addition, FDA Public Health Service officer Renee Dufault would have been safeguarded and may not have felt obliged to quit after trying to reveal findings of mercury in foods containing high fructose corn syrup.

“America’s food just got a lot safer,” said FIC director Amanda Hitt. “Government workers who serve as the public’s watchdog are now themselves safe from retaliation. Federal food safety employees have finally been deputized to protect the food supply.”

US Congress has finally passed what have been described as “the strongest federal whistleblower protections in history”, according to the Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign (FIC).

1 comment(Comments are now closed)

Despite years of leading whistleblower advocate organizations Project On Government Oversight and Government Accountability Project lobbying Congress to write into this bill a provision that would stop agencies from canceling out whistleblower protections using their unclassified secrecy regulations and/or rules, i.e., the Transportation Security Administration's "Sensitive Security Information":

This is evidence that both the House and Senate UNANIMOUSLY agreed with the Republican coauthor of the House version, Rep. Todd Russell Platts, that no such provision was needed due to the fact that such protections have been in place for over three decades. Rep. Platts speech on the House floor, "[the Civil Service Reform Act] has been the law since 1978, and it continues to be the law."